part0029

A nja leaned back in her seat and sighed as she watched the screens in front of her. She worked methodically to select the various camera feeds that would provide everything she needed to know. As tempting as it was, she acknowledged that when the lives of two people who depended on her were on the line, it probably wasn’t the best time to try out a new algorithm. Which really was a pity because she was certain that it would help her to sift through the veritable mountain of data that flooded into her servers to find what would help her.

There were good and bad things about modern hotels like the one Carlson had chosen. On the bright side, they had top-of-the-line everything when it came to cybersecurity. They had cameras on every floor and in every public room, as well as sensors that told them who was where at any given time. Anyone could walk into the hotel and not be tagged, but anyone who wanted to get past the lobby would have to receive an ID badge that would allow the security teams who ran the place to make sure that nothing hinky happened. Millions upon millions had been spent on places like these since they attracted a very particular kind of clientele. The kind that wanted the best of the best all the time and didn’t want to worry about their lives or privacy being threatened.

Top-of-the-line security, best of the best. Ironically, it was the kind that Anja and her various friends across the globe had a very instrumental part in building, and each one had left their own particular kind of signature on their work. Those signatures worked as back doors should they ever need to get past those security systems. Thankfully, the one at this particular hotel was on an open, if secure, feed back to the hotel’s headquarters in New York, which allowed Anja all the access that she needed. And more, unfortunately.

She had no interest in watching old billionaires cheat on their trophy wives with even younger women, and she certainly had no interest in all the back-door deals that were made. Well, there was an interest, sure, but it wasn’t exactly her priority, which meant that she had to save everything to sift through later. She needed to keep an eye on Savage and Coleman’s progress through the hotel.

It hadn’t been difficult to assign them their own ID badges—nothing physical of course, but the computers running the hotel didn’t need anything physical to keep from triggering alarms. They searched for RFID chips of some kind that were usually given to them by the hotel’s receptionists, and when a guest already had one, there was no need to ask them for another confirmation. Savage and Coleman would get into the hotel’s lobby and even the elevators without any trouble.

The real difficulty, of course, would be to get to the penthouse suite that was currently occupied by Carlson.

While the security in the rest of the building was mostly run on automatic with security personnel only alerted should someone trigger something, the security in the penthouse was watched by nine specialists who worked in eight-hour shifts, three at a time. They remained on constant alert to ensure that nothing out of the ordinary happened on the upper floor of the hotel.

Anja could trick the computer, and nobody would be the wiser, but she couldn’t trick people who scrutinized every camera feed like their lives depended on it. It was more than a little annoying. She wondered if this was the kind of security they provided for all their guests, or if it was something Carlson had demanded. Either way, it was an obstacle she needed to find a way around.

Savage and Coleman were already heading out of the parking garage and toward the elevators. He had changed out of his jeans and Polo shirt and now wore the suit he’d purchased a couple of days earlier. Anja studied his figure with new interest. Man, Savage sure does clean up nice. She’d also told Jessica to look the part and she definitely did so in a long, flowing summer dress. Expensive shoes and jewelry accented the simple lavender garment, all acquired during a hasty and very last-minute shopping trip specifically for the occasion. The Russian had needed to wire them more cash, but the benefits were difficult to deny. Subtlety and taste were what separated the rich from the wannabes. Maybe people would see wealth and high-class in Savage. Or maybe they would home in on his intimidating nature and think he was possibly the younger woman’s bodyguard.

Or maybe folks would assume they were lovers, Anja thought with a grin as she leaned back in her chair which responded with its familiar satisfying creak. Without looking, she fumbled for a few chips from a bowl on the table beside her and chewed slowly as she watched them move through the hotel. Despite his dangerous looks, Savage definitely sold the look of someone who belonged there.

“What are you doing?” someone said from the door of the server room. She glanced up as Amanda walked in. The woman looked like she’d been working on the armored suits all day and needed a break. Anja wouldn’t deny her one there. It was pleasant, air-conditioned, and had an entertaining show already in progress on the three screens in front of her.

She liked Amanda. The tough mechanic with a heart of gold and an affinity for firearms had become a very unlikely friend in these troubling times. “I’m watching Savage and the scientist break into the hotel, one step at a time.” The hacker grinned and rolled her chair back to give her companion a better view. “Do you want to watch?”

Amanda shrugged. “Sure, why not?” She took a couple of chips from the bowl and leaned back against the table.

“How does it do that?” she asked. “It switches over from one camera to the other so you can follow their movements through the hotel. Wouldn’t you normally have to do that manually?”

“Sure, in the nineties, perhaps.” The Russian chuckled. “This is a modern age, and I have all kinds of modern toys at my disposal. I piggybacked into the security feeds that run through that hotel, and I have one screen that scans the hotel for any of the men marked as security for Carlson. You can do that in a high-end hotel like that without too much trouble, but they still have to be registered at the front desk as guests. On screen number two, I keep track of all the security alerts. I have it on a delayed feed to the actual security team, which lets me kill any inopportune alerts that might be sent their way. It won’t be permanent, of course, but it will give our people a heads-up should something go bad.”

“Right.” The armorer nodded but still looked a little confused. “And how are you able to keep track of Savage and the good doctor through the hotel like that?”

“That’s the genius part,” Anja said and grinned happily. “I have the hotel alerted to their presence, but not in a way that would actually…you know, alert people. It lets me use the alert system to keep track of them without having to search through the literally hundreds of feeds that come from the hotel.”

“That is pretty genius. Did you have Connie help you with the setup?”

“I didn’t need our super-AI on this. I helped to write this security system as part of my thesis for graduation. Our professor gave us all A’s, of course, but he put his name on the code and sold it for millions of dollars. He has since retired from his job as a professor and set himself up with a little mansion in Scotland. This is my petty revenge. The asshole’s name will be tarnished forever, and very rich people will find him to demand a refund.”

“It’s not that petty,” Amanda said with a chortle of real amusement.

“Well, it is for me,” the hacker shot back with a mock-serious look on her face. “And now you know what will happen to you if you ever betray me. Keep that in mind, Gutierrez.”

“Will do, Anja,” Amanda grumbled but shook her head with mock disapproval. “So long as you only use your powers for good. And try to remember that I was always nice to you when you take over the world.”

“It will be taken into account.”

“Hello, Anja?” a voice said from the computer. “Are we clear to head on up to the penthouse or what? Or should we wait out here all day?”

“Shit.” she dragged herself closer to the screen and put her headset back on. “Uh…no, you are not cleared to proceed into the penthouse. Sorry, I’m still working on getting past the security people who watch it like hawks.”

“Are you really?” her companion asked with a grin.

“What?” Savage asked.

“I’m not talking to you,” Anja snapped.

“Well, you’d better fucking start.” He used that ice-cold voice of his. She hated how he managed to sound menacing despite being over ten thousand kilometers away.

“I’m working on getting their security feeds on a loop,” she replied and hated that she sounded rushed. “It’s a little difficult to do when these guys are paid six digits a year to do nothing but stare at a screen and hope something bad happens.”

“Do you have an approach vector for us?” True to form, he sounded like he already had a plan.

“Yes, the service elevator,” she said quickly. “It gives you direct access to the penthouse without needing a key. Only select people are allowed to use it since only select people have the passcode for it. The only thing is, there’s a camera there too, and someone watches that at all hours of the day.”

“And is anyone watching the way into the room where these peeping toms are situated right now?” Savage looked at the camera in the hallway where he and Coleman currently waited.

“No.” She had a bad feeling about where his mind process would lead. More importantly, she hated the fact that he’d stumbled onto the simplest solution to her problem before she had.

Her apparent failure irked her, but she encouraged herself with the reminder that for her, violence was always a last resort. That made her a good person, right?

“And what floor are these watchers on?” Jeremiah asked.

“Fifteenth floor,” Anja grumbled.

“Back to the elevators.” He took Coleman’s arm and walked her in the direction from which they’d come as fast as her new shoes would allow. Less than a minute later, they sauntered through the hallways of the fifteenth floor and followed the map of the place he’d asked her to send him to memorize. He reached the service entrance and opened the door that had been left unlocked.

Amanda stepped closer to the screen that followed the duo and narrowed her eyes. “Is this the Savage guy people have been talking about? He has the look of a man with violence on his mind, but he doesn’t really look like much. So maybe he’s handsome enough, especially in the suit, but he’s not very big, or tall, or strong-looking.” She sounded disappointed.

“They never are,” the hacker replied softly. “The door to the security room should be unlocked.”

“Thank you.” He motioned for Jessica to stay where she was as he moved to the door. With measured movements, he drew the gun from his pocket and the knife from his jacket and held both like he intended to use them in ways they definitely weren’t intended to be used. Anja frowned as she considered this, then decided that pistols could be used as clubs. It wasn’t unheard of.

He opened the door to the room and her feed switched automatically to the one inside. Three men spun to face the entry, surprised to have someone visiting their little room. It was rather cramped with so many screens, computers, and three people besides.

“Hey, I’m from IT,” Savage said with a charming smile. “I was sent to inspect…something.”

That absolutely wouldn’t cut it, and he knew that. She wondered if his purpose was to play for time, which would allow him to get in close enough to the three-man team that had now all stood. They saw the weapons in his hands and froze for an instant as they absorbed the reality of the situation.

Savage reacted quickly. He smacked the butt of his knife into the closest man’s skull. His target dropped quickly and quietly, probably concussed and very likely with a cracked skull. Anja couldn’t tell from her perspective. She needed to move on since the operative had already done so. The remaining men tried to back away and draw the pistols holstered on their hips. He attacked in a blur of motion that delivered a flurry of blows with both his firearm and the haft of the knife. His onslaught first caught the man on the right on the jaw. The one on the left met the knife blow in the gut with a grunt. It doubled him over and the attacker brought his knee up hard into the man’s nose. He fell back but clutched his face, down but not out although it might take a few seconds for him to regroup.

His colleague stumbled forward, groggy, and flailed in an attempt to gain a grip on his assailant. The motions were futile, and his eyes bulged as he stumbled back when Savage’s knee connected painfully with his groin.

“Ouch,” Amanda said, and she looked like she had actually enjoyed watching the fight. “Maybe a little more than meets the eye, this one. Marine?”

“Army, from what I gathered,” Anja replied as the operative dispatched the final man into an early naptime.

“Ugh, douchebag.” The armorer shook her head.

“Okay, Savage, if you’re done beating three guys up, you might want to get rid of the security footage.” The Russian chuckled as he looked around at the screens. “Here’s what you need to do—”

She paused when she realized that he wasn’t listening to her. He yanked the computers out of their sockets and removed the hard drives and motherboards by hand. Methodically, he proceeded to drop them and crush them beneath his dress shoes.

“Was that what you had in mind?” Savage asked when he finally stepped over the unconscious men and the remains of their computers. He took the time to relieve them of their phones, radios, and weapons before he left the room.

“I wanted to do something a little subtler, but yeah, that was the quickest way to make sure no sign of your presence in the hotel remains.” She focused and shook off the feeling of dread that had reared its head when she saw someone manhandle a computer so roughly. “Let me guess—you want me to alert the medical services about the poor bastards you crushed with your big man-hands?”

“Nope, nothing like that.” He dropped the items he’d taken outside the door before he removed both the key and handle from the inside with a rough tug. He looked hurried, like they were running out of time. She wasn’t sure what he knew, but by this point, she had learned to trust his instincts. He locked the door and left the key in the lock. “We need to reach that room and be in and out before anyone realizes what happened. That means these guys will have to survive without any medical attention until we’re out of the hotel. Now, which way to the service elevator?”

“To your left.” Anja leaned back in her seat and was immediately comforted by the creak. It wasn’t as satisfying now as it had been ten minutes before, though.

“Do you have any idea of what we’re looking for?” he asked as the elevator doors pinged and he and Coleman stepped inside. She could hear the woman arguing in the background and her saying something about how they couldn’t leave the men there. He attempted to wave her protests aside.

“Well, Carlson would need to keep all the transfer paperwork of what he took out of the Pegasus facility on hand,” the hacker said softly. “Any transfer like that would have to be authorized by the board of directors of the company and go through a government inspection. That would be to make sure that nothing hazardous was transferred without the proper authorization, as well as to ensure that it is currently stored in the proper containment. To get around that, most people like Carlson would file these papers with the proper authorities but grease palms to make sure that any judge in charge shuffles it to the bottom of the pile. You only need to have an application in place in order to actually do all this.”

“But Carlson would need to have the paperwork on him or close to him in case questions are asked,” Savage replied with a nod of understanding. “Since he’s still in possession of all the transferred items, he needs to make sure he would be cleared if Monroe or Anderson start an inquiry on the facility.”

“Right,” she confirmed. “You have to find the papers and get a location of precisely where the items were transferred to. Once we have both and with the application paperwork out of his hands, Carlson opens himself to a government investigation. That, hopefully, would allow his entire network of lies to unravel. And considering that he handled government contracts, that will be huge. He’ll see jail time in the rich-guy prisons they have in Florida, which will then give Courtney and Anderson free rein to eliminate Pegasus.”

“And fun times will be had by all.” His sarcasm carried no amusement. It was a good plan, there was no denying that, but things were so rarely left that clean for them to work with. It was a pain and there would be a lot of obstacles still to face, but Anja felt the difficulty that remained would be one they could live with. All they needed were those application papers.

Savage and Jessica stepped into the penthouse. She looked somewhat awed by the sheer luxury of the apartment, but he remained more focused and hurried toward the bedroom of the suite in search of the safe.

“What am I supposed to do?” she asked.

“Look around for anything that might tell you about where they transferred all your research,” he responded. “I assume that the number of facilities that can actually safely store stuff like that is fairly limited and that you’d know about most of them, so look around. See if you can find receipts or something that might give you an idea of where they are.”

“You’re giving me busywork to get me out of your way, aren’t you?” she challenged.

“This search will come to an abrupt end if Carlson decides to return to his room. If I were in the business of wasting man-hours rather than doing what we have to do, I would have left you tied up in our new motel room,” he snarled in response. “Now start looking!”

She jumped at his tone and scanned the apartment in bewilderment. In all fairness, there was a lot of space to search and they had no idea where to start. He worked methodically through the main bedroom and finally located a safe tucked under the bed.

“Anja, do you have any idea how to crack this thing?” he asked and looked around as if he expected to see her.

“Uh…yeah, hold on.” The hacker moved quickly to her third screen, minimized the alert notifications, and opened a search bar. She knew which safes the hotel had fitted in all their rooms three years before, just as she knew that there was always a way to revert the safe to factory settings if a guest forgot to do so themselves and left the door locked. It took seconds to find the process on the company’s site after she’d sifted through a weak firewall and she immediately walked Savage through the process. It was fairly simple, with a simple ten-digit code that he had to input while he pressed the reset button continuously. In a few seconds, the safe clicked open.

“Have I told you that you’re something of a superhero?” Savage asked as he retrieved a thick binder of papers from within.

“No, and you could stand to tell me a couple more times to make sure I heard it,” Anja said with a small smile and returned her attention to the camera feeds.

“Doc, did you find anything yet?” Jeremiah asked. He didn’t intend to look through the documents now. Time was of the essence, and he could only assume that he had what he’d come for and leave. The clock ticked loudly in his head.

“Nothing yet,” she said. “There are a couple of pictures with local dignitaries in the trash, but that’s basically it.” She walked into the room and glanced around a little helplessly.

“Take them anyway,” he said. “Our time’s up here. Anja, let me know when the service elevators are clear to use again.”

“Will do,” the Russian confirmed. She entered a couple of commands into her keyboard and called up the relevant camera.

Her heart immediately lurched into her throat as she realized that the elevator now contained seven men, all heavily armed. Without a doubt, all were headed up to the penthouse—and, in fact, were scant seconds away from their destination.